Philippines rescuers find bodies of all four people on small plane that crashed into active volcano

Rescuers located the bodies of four people onboard a small plane that crashed near the crater of an active volcano in the Philippines, officials said.

Officials confirmed the deaths of the two Filipino pilots and two Australian passengers, inside the Cessna 340 plane on Thursday.

The team of rescuers reached the wreckage site on Wednesday and found the bodies.

It could take hours to bring down the remains of the Filipino pilot, crew member and the two Australian engineers from the volcano’s slope as the terrain is rugged, making the next stage of operation difficult, said Caloy Baldo, mayor of the Camalig town where the aircraft crashed just minutes after taking off on Saturday, reported Xinhua news agency.

“There were no survivors,” the mayor said and added that the remains of the crash victims would be brought down the volcano on Thursday.

The top official said that the team has already shifted from rescue to retrieval operation.

The mayor oversaw the search for the Cessna aircraft by nearly 200 army troops, firefighters and volunteers, including veteran mountaineers.

More than a dozen army troops and firefighters were dropped down from an air force helicopter on Wednesday morning. These rescuers then hiked to the crash site on a gully on Mayon volcano’s slope, civil aviation officials said.

Searchers had been deployed to hike the slopes of a restive Philippine volcano since Sunday after the wreckage of the destroyed aircraft was spotted 300m from the crater.

The two Australians were working as consultants for Energy Development Corp, a large geothermal power company, which owned the plane that was flown by a Filipino pilot with a crew member.

The energy firm also deployed teams backed by helicopters and drones to help in the search, which was hampered by heavy rains, gusty wind and thick clouds.

Australian deputy prime minister Richard Marles expressed his condolences to the families of the crash victims before the deaths were confirmed.

“Can I just express my condolences to both Australian and Filipino families of those who died in the very tragic plane accident?” Mr Marles, who was in Manila on Wednesday, asked Philippine defence chief Carlito Galvez Jr in a news conference in Manila.

Aviation officials lost contact with the plane a few minutes after it took off from Albay’s international airport on Saturday morning for the hour-long flight to the capital, Manila.

Officials said that its wreckage was spotted in an aerial search on Sunday on the slope of the 8,077ft (2,462m) volcano but an air force helicopter only managed to ferry the search team near the crash site Wednesday morning after the weather improved.

Only the tail section of the plane was found intact but the rest of the wreckage was seen scattered on the barren upper slopes of the volcano, said Eric Apolonio, spokesperson of the civil aviation authority of the Philippines.